In the Company of Volcanoes

-Alison It seems obvious to say volcanoes are big, but as with anything in geology size is not immediately obvious. Volcanoes can loom over a landscape, spread ash over large chunks of the planet and even influence our climate- that all sounds big. On the scale of an individual human any eruption is big. They are frequently faster than, slower than (yes both), hotter than and physically larger than a human being. One of the exercises I use when teaching volcanology is focused on understanding just how big, "big" is. We go about this by finding things that we already understand the size and compare them to volcanoes. Like many natural processes (and humans), volcanoes and volcanic eruptions come in all shapes and sizes. If volcanoes only had one size and style of eruption our job studying them and anticipating future eruptions would be much easier. The only human-sized volcano I have ever seen. It was a volcano costume in Kagoshima Japan in 2013. We need to be able...

I just returned from two, very warm, weeks in Italy. The group wanted to go somewhere with volcanoes and good food, so Italy was a natural choice. While Italian geology is fascinating in its own right, that will have to be saved for a different post. Today's post is a bit of urban geology.  I found that I spent most of my time in Rome looking at the building stone, and took mostly pictures of rocks and stone. The Romans collected the most beautiful stone from their empire and then used to make buildings and show off their wealth. These stones were then scavenged from Roman sites to build the next round of impressive buildings by the Catholic Church. So when you tour buildings in Rome it includes a geologic tour of the whole Mediterranean. While most visitors expect Rome to made of endless white marble there are a range of stone types from around the far reaches of the Roman Empire. One of the classic stone types used to impress visitors is this deep red por...